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Privation
Privation is the failure to form an attachment and can be caused
following the death of both parents (most likely during times of war)
resulting in children being raised in institutions or it can be caused
by extreme neglect in which children are raised in isolation. We shall
look at the latter first and consider the findings, the ethical issues
raised and also the methodological problems and benefits of using case
studies in psychology.
Case studies
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Genie |
Genie (as reported by
Curtiss 1977)
Found at the age of 13, shehad been kept tied to a potty chair
for much of her life. She had been severely punished for making
a noise. When found she had the appearance of a six or seven
year old. Curtiss described her as ‘unsocialised, primitive and
hardly human.’
Following her discovery she continued to be mistreated at the
hands of doctors and psychologists who were more interested in
furthering their own careers than in Genie’s welfare. She never
acquired full language skills and failed to adjust socially.
Unfortunately we have no way of knowing whether Genie was, as
her father suggested, brain damaged at birth. If this had been
the case this could partly explain her lack of progress.
Czech twins,
PM and JM (as
reported by Koluchova 1976).
PM and
JM were male identical twins born in the former Czechoslovakia 1960.
Their mother died at birth. They spent 11 months in a children's home
before being reared by their father and stepmother. The father was of
low intellect and the stepmother was particularly brutal in her
treatment of the twins. They were kept in a small closet or cellar.
They were discovered at the age of 7. Their speech was poor and they
had rickets (due to vitamin D deficiency caused by poor diet), so
consequently could not walk. They were subsequently adopted by two
sisters and were well cared for. They were tested at the age of 14 and
showed no long term ill effects. In later life they both found
employment and ‘enjoyed warm relationships.’
Clearly
the outcome of these two cases is very different. However, it does
appear that given favourable care a near full recovery from early
privation is possible. There are a number of reasons why Genie’s
outcome was not good:
The possibility that
she may have been brain damaged at birth as her father had suggested
The later age at
which she was discovered
She had been reared
alone whereas the twins had each other.
The better care the
twins received after being rescued.
Freud and
Dann (1951) and the concentration camp victims
Six
children whose parents had been murdered in concentration camps were
adopted into English families after the war. Despite having no adult
attachment figures in their early lives, having no speech and witnessing
all types of atrocities the children went on to make reasonable
recoveries.
If asked
to describe the procedure of a study investigating privation do
not use case studies!
Case
studies; the issues
Ethical
Case
studies provide ideal opportunities for psychologists to study
situations that could not be created in any other way. However, in so
doing they need to keep the best interests of their participants in
mind. This doesn’t appear to have been the case with Genie. In the
case of privation we usually have young children who because of their
age or mental state are unable to give full consent to research. Carers
may also feel pressurised into allowing access to psychologists even
though it may not be in the child’s interest. Psychologists on the
other hand have a double-obligation dilemma. They have a duty to
carry out research into this area but also a duty of care to those being
studied.
Methodological
Case
studies can provide lots of detailed and intimate information about a
particular condition and its causes. However, by their nature they are
one-offs and involve patients who have been exposed to a unique set of
conditions and are therefore suffering unique symptoms. Although a case
study can provide detailed information about one individual case it is
difficult to then generalise findings to others or to come up with a
theory based on what is likely to be one disturbed individual. The two
studies above highlight this perfectly. Two cases of extreme privation
but with very different outcomes and no way of knowing why.
Cases of
institutionalised privation provide less detailed information and appear
less interesting, but do allow for much greater levels of control and
probably tell us more as a result.
Institutionalisation
Bowlby
famously claimed that a bad home was better than a good institution
because of the poor psychological care children receive in such places.
Skodak & Skeels (1949) compared two groups of mentally retarded children
brought up in an institution. One group were transferred to a home to
be cared for, the other group remained in the institution. Those
removed to a home showed improvement in their IQ (up from 64 to 91),
those remaining in the institution showed a drop in IQ (down from 87 to
61). I don’t know why their IQs were so different at the start! Twenty
years later the difference was still present. This would appear to lend
support to Bowlby. However, most studies suggest Bowlby was wrong:
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Hodges and Tizard (1989))
A very
useful study both in its findings and in its design!
This is
a natural experiment. All experiments have an IV and a DV.
Usually the IV is manipulated by the experimenter (for example time
spent counting backwards in the Brown-Peterson procedure). However,
with a natural experiment researchers take advantage of an IV that
changes naturally, in this case children in care either being fostered
or being returned home.
It is
also longitudinal. The researchers study the same group of
children on a number of occasions at different stages in their
development.
Hodges and
Tizard (1989)
Procedure
Sixty five
children in a care home were assessed over a 16 year period. The
participants in the study were all aged 16 and had all been in
institutional care until the age of four. During this time they had not
been able to form attachments because of the high turn over of staff.
By the age of two the children had on average 24 different carers each!
At the age of four:
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25 of
the children were returned to their biological parents
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33 were
adopted
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7
remained in the institution with occasional fostering
The above
categories (form of care) are the IV for this experiment.
Five main methods were used to collect data on all the adolescents
(including those in the comparison groups):
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An
interview with the adolescent;
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An
interview with the mother (in some cases with their father present);
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A
self-report questionnaire concerning 'social difficulties';
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A
questionnaire completed by the participants' school teacher about
their relationships with their peers and their teachers;
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Rutter
'B' scale which is a type of psychometric test which identifies
psychiatric problems such as depression.
Findings
At 16 the
majority of the adoptive mothers (17/21) felt that their child was
deeply attached to them, whereas only a half of the restored children
were described as deeply attached. Adopted adolescents were also more
often said by their mothers to be attached to their father than the
restored group.
Ex-institutional children had greater problems with siblings than a
comparison group.
There were
no differences regarding the number of contacts with opposite sex
friends, or whether the 16 year-old currently had a boy/girl friend
compared to non-institutionalised adolescents.
However,
ex-institutional children had poorer relationships with peers than a
comparison group. Teachers rated the ex-institutionalised group as more
often quarrelsome, less often liked by other children and as bullying
other children more than the comparison group.
Conclusion
Hodges and
Tizard believed that their findings demonstrate that children who are
deprived of close and lasting attachments to adults in their first years
of life can make such attachments later, although this does depend on
the adults concerned and how much they nurture such attachments. Hodges
and Tizard offer an explanation for why the adopted children were more
likely to overcome some of the problems of early institutional
upbringing better than the restored children. The financial situation
of the adoptive families was often better, they had on average fewer
children to provide for, and the adoptive parents were particularly
highly motivated to have a child and to develop a relationship with that
child. The biological parents in Hodges and Tizard's sample seemed to
have been 'more ambivalent about their child living with them'.
Evaluation
Being a
natural experiment this is very high in ecological validity.
However,
being a natural experiment the researchers would have had little control
over confounding variables. For example in this study at the age of
four the children were split with some returning to parents and others
being adopted whilst seven stayed mostly in care. It is unlikely that
this would have been a random process! It is most likely that the more
personable children with the better social skills would have been
fostered. The ones with the most problems are likely to have remained
in care. As a result it is difficult to be certain that the resulting
behaviours at the age of sixteen were down to type of care. They could
have been due to temperament of the child.
Longitudinal studies can suffer from attrition. Not all participants
starting the procedure see it through to the end. Families move to
other areas, no longer want to take part or simply can’t be traced. In
the case of Hodges and Tizard only 51 of the original 65 were questioned
at the age of eight. The ones who are left may not be representative of
the initial sample.
The
effects of institutionalisation
Reactive detachment disorder
Ever
seen ‘Good Will Hunting?” Matt Damon plays a character with this
condition. An extreme lack of sensitive responsiveness from a parent in
early life can lead to a child growing up unable to trust or love
others. They become isolated and very selfish and unable to understand
the needs of others can become sociopathic without a conscience.
Disinhibited attachment..
A
condition in which children select attachment figures indiscriminately
and behave in an overly familiar fashion with complete strangers. It
seems to be caused by long periods of institutional care in early life.
They often have other behavioural disorders too including attention
seeking.
Rutter et al (2007) and the Romanian orphans
This is
an on-going longitudinal study which began in 1998.
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Romanian orphans were adopted into British families. Rutter wanted to
see if good care could compensate for the privation the children had
suffered before the overthrow of the Communist dictator Ceaucescu.
Again
this has been run as a natural experiment with age of adoption being the
naturally occurring independent variable (IV). Rutter is studying three
groups:
·
Adopted before the age
of 6 months
·
Adopted between 6 months
and 2 years
·
Adopted after the age of
two (late adoptees).
By the
age of six years children were making very good recoveries, however,
those adopted later (older than two years) had a much higher level of
disinhibited attachment. In 2007 Rutter returned to the children (then
aged eleven years) and found that some had made recoveries but about
half of those diagnosed with the condition at the age of six still had
it at the age of eleven.
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